Seton Hall men’s basketball’s losing streak reached two-straight on Saturday afternoon—and with it, their home-court advantage.
With snow falling outside the Prudential Center (and a low student-section turnout inside), the No. 25 Pirates (14-4, 4-3 BIG EAST) fell themselves, 77-66, to the Butler Bulldogs (11-7, 2-5 BIG EAST), who entered the game on a four-game losing streak. Prior to Saturday, Butler had yet to win on the road this season.
But Butler managed to earn such a win on Saturday thanks to another poor first-half showing from The Hall, who have made a habit since conference play started of struggling through the first 20 minutes of play. The warning signs were there early on in the game, when in its first three minutes, the Pirates committed four fouls, two of which were on starting senior guard Elijah Fisher, resulting in limited minutes for him.
It wasn’t all bad, though, as SHU had a 16-9 lead at the under-12 timeout behind a strong start from graduate guard AJ Staton-McCray, who had five early points, including a three-pointer off a play designed for him, two rebounds and an assist at that point in the game.
But that was when things took a turn for the worse for the Pirates, and when the Bulldogs took the momentum from them. Over the next 12 minutes left in the half, Butler scored 25 points, while SHU mustered just four points and shot just 2-for-24 (8.3%) in that same span. Butler went on a 10-2 run from the 11:27 to 8:10 mark, then both a 7-0 run and a 8-0 run in the last seven minutes of the first half to take a 34-24 halftime lead.
“The last seven minutes of the first half…. I don’t know what’s going on,” AJ Staton-McCray said after the game. “We got to figure that out, talk to each other as a team, but we’re gonna figure that out.”
With the Bulldogs’ 10-point halftime lead, the Pirates have now trailed by double-digits at one point in six of their seven BIG EAST games so far this season, having come back from such a deficit in three of them.
“We just can’t put ourselves in that hole [because] it’s hard to always try to crawl back,” Staton-McCray added. “We’ve done it a few times, but every game we can’t be in that situation.”
The Pirates’ late-first half struggles came once the Bulldogs implemented a 1-3-1 defensive zone, which exposed one of SHU’s biggest weaknesses: three-point shooting. The Hall entered Saturday’s contest among the nation’s bottom 10 in made three pointers, with just 5.2 per game. In their loss to No. 3 UConn on Tuesday, the Pirates shot a season-low 1-for-16 (6.3%) from beyond the arc.
“They kind of slowed us down with the 1-3-1, and we got complacent for a little bit,” Pirates coach Shaheen Holloway said about what caused the game’s change of momentum late in the first half. “And then from there just…I don’t know, I got to watch the film.”
From there, The Hall continued to struggle, with Staton-McCray committing a foul just eight seconds into the second half. For the next two and a half minutes, the teams traded baskets, until Butler’s Bizjack and Kaiser hit an open corner three-pointer then a pair of free-throws, respectively, for a 5-0 run that extended the Bulldogs’ lead to 15 at 17:32. The duo then followed that with a layup each to grow that lead to 17—Butler’s largest lead of the game with just under 16 minutes to go.
But Pirate Nation had a collective “Here we go again” moment, when junior guard Mike Williams found senior forward Josh Rivera in transition for a two-handed slam to cap off a 7-0 run for the Pirates that brought the game back under double digits, them down by nine (55-46) with nine minutes left. Minutes later, SHU now back to trailing by 10, Staton-McCray hit a pair of free throws, then scored a tough up-and-under layup after collecting his own miss to bring the game within six points with five and a half minutes left, the Prudential Center crowd erupting in cheer.
But similar to last game, early foul trouble caught up with the Pirates, as they were in the double-penalty for the last six and half minutes of the game. This set the stage for Butler to ice the game from the line, with them making 14-of-16 free throw attempts in that span to hold on for the 77-66 win, their first away from home this season.
Although they lost, the Pirates managed to cut the 17-point deficit to six points thanks to their patented full-court pressure, which makes it difficult for teams to inbound the ball and then bring it up court. After the game, Staton-McCray said that the press was working to great effect, but it was the Pirates’ halfcourt defense that cost them the win—a rarity for a team who entered Saturday with a top-10 defense in the nation.
“We got what we wanted with the press, [but] it was our halfcourt [defense],” Staton-McCray said. “Us just not containing, not staying in front over screens, not being in help quick enough, and then just dumb reaches.”
As one of their leaders, Staton-McCray said his message to the team after the loss was that “It’s a long season” and that “We’ve got a lot of games to go.”
Holloway praised Staton-McCray, who finished the game with 17 points while shooting 4-for-10 (40%) from the field, 1-for-4 (25%) from deep and a perfect 8-for-8 from the line after struggling to score in his last few games.
“AJ wasn’t shooting well [entering the game], and today he came out with the mindset of just being aggressive,” Holloway said. “He only made one three, but his aggressiveness got him a chance to get to the free-throw line, where he went 8-for-8. Those are the things that players have to do.”
“After a while, as a player, you just kind of figure things out,” Holloway added. “We got a couple guys that are kind of trying to figure things out, and it's my job to help them, watch film with them, and put them in position, but after a while, they got to figure things out. Today, [Staton-McCray] got to the free-throw line—to me, that’s kind of figuring it out. That’s understanding that, ‘My shot’s not falling, let me impact the game a different way.’”
Butler went to the line themselves a total of 41 times compared to SHU’s 25, outscoring the Pirates 33-to-17 from there, which a frustrated Holloway acknowledged after the game while also praising the Bulldogs’ effort.
“Give Butler a lot of credit: they came here and played hard, outplayed us a little in certain things,” Holloway said. “When you out-rebound somebody 45-to-27, normally you win the game, but then they go to the free-throw line 41 times—I ain’t never seen nothing like that before. That’s a little nutty, but that’s the way they called it.”
The Pirates indeed out-rebounded the Bulldogs 45-to-27, including a 21-to-5 advantage on the offensive glass. This should have helped SHU win, as Butler are one of the best rebounding teams in the nation and the single-best in the conference (they entered Saturday’s contest first in rebound margin, offensive rebounds per game and total rebounds per game), but with as many free-throws as the Bulldogs attempted, the rebounding advantage didn’t have as much as an impact as Holloway or the team would have liked.
But apart from the teams’ free-throw disparity, Holloway was most frustrated by the Pirates “not taking care of business at home” in their last two games, especially given the caliber of teams in the BIG EAST that makes road wins so valuable.
“That’s the most important thing,” Holloway said. “Taking care of business at home in this league, because it's tough to win on the road.”
Holloway was also level with the media about the loss, owning up to the fact that he and his players are going to have to “figure it out” if they want to keep having success in the conference.
“Listen, every game is not going to be great,” Holloway said. “This is the BIG EAST, right? This is a great league, great coaches in this league, they’re going to make adjustments, and players just have to figure out that some nights are just not your night.”
“We just got to figure it out,” Holloway added. “I got to do a better job of making these guys understand this league, because nobody’s really played in this league except Godswill [Erheriene], Jahseem [Felton], and Elijah. It’s physical, man.”
Having lost their last two, the Pirates will look to bounce back in a major way on Tuesday, when they travel across the Hudson to play St. John’s (12-5, 5-1 BIG EAST) at Madison Square Garden.
Zachary Mawby is the head editor of The Setonian’s Sports section. He can be reached at zachary.mawby@student.shu.edu.
